Note: Citations are based on reference standards. However, formatting rules can vary widely between applications and fields of interest or study. The specific requirements or preferences of your reviewing publisher, classroom teacher, institution or organization should be applied.

"The Civil War has long been described as a war pitting "brother against brother." The divided family is an enduring metaphor for the divided nation, but it also accurately reflects the reality of America's bloodiest war. Connecting the metaphor to the real experiences of families whose households were split by conflicting opinions about the war, Amy Murrell Taylor provides a social and cultural history of the divided family in Civil War America. In hundreds of border state households, brothers -- -and sisters -- -really did fight one another, while fathers and sons argued over secession and husbands and wives struggled with opposing national loyalties. Even enslaved men and women found themselves divided over how to respond to the war. Taylor studies letters, diaries, newspapers, and government documents to understand how families coped with the unprecedented intrusion of war into their private lives. Family divisions inflamed the national crisis while simultaneously embodying it on a small scale -- -something noticed by writers of popular fiction and political rhetoric, who drew explicit connections between the ordeal of divided families and that of the nation. Weaving together an analysis of this popular imagery with the experiences of real families, Taylor demonstrates how the effects of the Civil War went far beyond the battlefield to penetrate many facets of everyday life."--Publisher description.Read more...

Union father, rebel son --
Marriage and courtship --
Brothers and sisters --
Border crossing and the treason of family ties --
Border dramas and the divided family in the popular imagination --
Reconciliations lived and imagined --
Reconciliation and emancipation.

Abstract:

The crisis of the "house divided".Read more...

Reviews

Editorial reviews

Publisher Synopsis

"["The Divided Family in Civil War America"] is a sophisticated and multi-faceted treatment of an ambitious topic. Taylor makes as significant a contribution to gender and family history as she does to that the on the Civil War home front, and her book deserves a wide readership from those interested in either field." -- "Journal of Southern History" "Broad, deep, and thoroughly current." -- "Register of the Kentucky Historical Society" "A deeply researched and well-written book." -- "Arkansas Historical Quarterly" "A rich, new perspective on the Civil War." -- "Virginia Magazine" "Broad, deep, and thoroughly current." - "Register of the Kentucky Historical Society" "A rich, new perspective on the Civil War." - "Virginia Magazine"Read more...